Web inventor's open data organisation announces new global network

US, Canada, Russia and France among 13 to sign agreements with Open Data Institute co-founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Lights around the London's 2012 Olympic stadium describe Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention, the world wide web. The Open Data Institute, which he co-founded, declares a mandate of 'Knowledge for Everyone'. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

Tuesday 29 October 2013 03.00 EDT
First published on Tuesday 29 October 2013 03.00 EDT

Just one year after its foundation in London, an organisation created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt to stimulate economic, environmental and social innovation through a system of open data sharing and analysis, has announced rapid global expansion of its ambitions.

The Open Data Institute has announced the launch of 13 international centres, known as "nodes", each of which will bring together companies, universities, and NGOs that support open data projects and communities. The nodes will be based in the US, Canada, France, Dubai, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Argentina, with two extra US nodes Chicago and North Carolina. Three further UK nodes are to open in Manchester, Leeds and Brighton.

The new ODI nodes will variously operate at local and national levels. Each one has agreed to adopt the ODI Charter, which is a open source codification of the ODI itself, and embodies principles of open data business, publishing, communication, and collaboration.

The ODI is a non-for-profit organisation that has so far helped set up more than a dozen open data-based startup companies in the UK, generating income, research and training. It has also created a certificate for open data allowing all users to access information on many areas such as healthcare, transport, peer-to-peer lending, and energy efficiency. The UK ODI secured £10m funding over five years from the UK innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, $750,000 from global philanthropic investor Omidyar Network created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. It aims for long-term sustainability through match funding and direct revenue through memberships and supporters.

With the new global network announced at the ODI's first annual summit at the Museum of London on Tuesday, CEO Gavin Starks said: "I have been amazed at the energy and enthusiasm of people looking to align around a global network of ODIs … the speed at which we have been able to collaborate, and the shared thinking about the approach and the scale of the potential. We have borrowed from the design principles of the web itself to bring people and organisations together, and will use open data both to collaborate with each other, and as the primary output of the network."

Berners-Lee and Shadbolt described their motivation for the ODI: "We recognised there was a great opportunity to enhance transparency, improve efficiency, and create social, environmental and economic value. The best way that open becomes the new default is demand: from businesses and organisations, both public and private, from individuals and corporations. There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

Sir Nigel Shadbolt (left) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee co-founders of the Open Data Institute which announces 13 international 'nodes' at its first annual summit. Photograph: Rex Features

Big data specialists MastadonC joined the ODI startup programme in December 2012 and has been one of ODI's particular success stories. MastodonC offers an open source technology platform for clients in a zero-carbon structure. It analysed NHS prescribing data with Open Health Care UK and Ben Goldacre, the doctor and writer behind BadScience.net. Its study revealed a potential £200m of NHS savings after analysing prescribing patterns for statins, drugs used to prevent cardiovascular problems. It also worked alongside the Department for Climate Change and the Energy Saving Trust, managing data from a project to retrofit more than 100 homes, from which it revealed emissions savings of between 60% and 85%.

The ODI also helped produce a report, Show me the Money that provided a comprehensive snapshot of the UK peer-to-peer lending (P2P) market. It also became the first financial data published with an open data certificate. As a result of the research, loan company LendInvest lowered its minimum investor-led level from £50,000 to £10,000. Transport API (built by another startup, Placr) created a single source of public transport information for developers that includes timetable, live departure and disruption information from open data sources data to Transport for London, CityMapper, and more than 300 developers. Digital startup CarbonCulture has worked with No 10 Downing Street, Tate Modern and Cardiff Council to measure and report on their carbon and energy performance.

Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, said: "The Open Data Institute – the first organisation of its kind – grew out of our belief in the power of open data to foster innovation, drive economic growth and create prosperity. The fact that only one year on, cities and countries around the world want to adopt the ODI model, is evidence of how quickly the open data revolution is spreading. The establishment of ODI nodes in UK cities will help embed an open data culture in communities, and bring the economic benefits of new and innovative data-led businesses that will help the UK compete in the global race."

With its new global network, the ODI aims to replicate such achievements internationally. Waldo Jaquith, founder the new US-wide ODI, said: "'The US has a vibrant, fast-growing open data ecosystem. The ODI provides a model that can help to catalyse and connect the organisations, governments, businesses, and individuals who are doing brilliant work with open data. As a nation, we have the resources, tools, and people that we need – they just need to be connected and given a helping hand. It's time to bring the ODI model to the US."

On the overall subject of accountability, ODI co-founder Shadbolt, who is also professor of artificial intelligence at Southampton University, said: "There will be times when we have to hold government to account, to call out poor data practice, to highlight the precarious state of data assets in both the public and private sector."

The ODI uses the term "nodes" after Berners-Lee's revolutionary step in 1989 in creation of the world wide web. At the time he proposed that "HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will." The ODI aims to be catalyst for change as much as Berners-Lee's 24-year-old invention.